Bill Maher calls out Mike Rogers radio switch

Liberal comic Bill Maher said it makes “perfect sense” that Republican Rep. Mike Rogers announced that he will not seek reelection, instead heading for a new gig in talk radio.

“It actually makes perfect sense, because the GOP has kind of become talk radio, an echo chamber where people are not interested in actually legislating or compromising or fixing America, just in screeching about how liberals have ruined it,” Maher said Friday during his HBO program “Real Time With Bill Maher.” “So why not do it on the radio? The money’s better. And no one can see your toupee.”

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Maher noted that other lawmakers have left office for media jobs but added that “it says a lot” that Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is leaving “to join an already long list of conservative radio hosts.”

Rogers made news last month when he announced that he would retire at the end of his term and join Cumulus, the talk radio company. However, Maher ribbed the Michigan congressman’s remarks at the time that he was doing so to “move the needle.”

“Yeah, right, because if there is one job where you can never affect policy, it’s in the branch of government that writes policy,” Maher said. “The place for that is AM radio.”

However, Maher joked that Rogers is following in the footsteps of other conservatives who found success outside the Hill, including GOP 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

“There’s never been a better time to quit government and go into the lucrative business of b——ing about government,” Maher said. “It worked for Joe Scarborough and Mike Huckabee, and, most famously of course, Sarah Palin.”

He slammed the GOP.

“Today’s Republicans aren’t built to govern; they don’t want to go to the moon, they want to howl at it,” Maher said.

He added, “That’s why just the fact of getting elected, means you’re already damaged goods. Unless you go to Washington and act like the single-biggest pr—- in the room all the time, you’re suspect.”

Maher said this is the reason why Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is the only person currently in government who the base completely trusts.

“He’s the guy who bests understands that high office is just a higher form of talk radio,” Maher said.